Messi was already a hit in Miami. Then he stepped onto the field.
Since Lionel Messi announced in early June that he planned to make a stunning leap into Major League Soccer for the twilight of his career, he has turned the world of his new team, Inter Miami, upside down and put South Florida in the spotlight. Considered arguably the greatest footballer of all time, Messi brought an unprecedented amount of attention to a team only in its fourth season and stuck in last place.
And when Messi made a foul at the top of the box in the third minute of extra time on his highly anticipated debut on Friday, he was given the chance to prove once again why he was worth all the fuss, money and admiration. As he lined up for the free kick in the waning seconds of the game, the 20,512 crowd at the DRV PNK Stadium wondered if he could create another memorable moment in an already storied career.
The answer: of course. With his golden left foot, Messi drilled a shot into the top left corner of the net, making the winning difference in a 2-1 win over Mexican team Cruz Azul that looked surreal but also quite fitting.
“A huge joy to get our first win after how we did in the league,” Messi said in Spanish in a television interview after the game.
Teammate Kamal Miller said it best when he commented that it was “crazy how the whole crowd expected the ball to go there, and he put it right there.” He later added, “We all felt that if anyone could pull off something of that magnitude, that’s the right guy.”
This is the strength of Messi. Before he agreed to come here, Inter Miami was perhaps best known for a scam scandal in 2021. And this season, Miami had not won since May 23, an 11-game span. But Messi, 36, has already made an immediate impression on and off the pitch.
Messi, who led Argentina to World Cup glory in December and has claimed seven Ballons d’Or as the world’s best male footballer, isn’t just an iconic athlete who has reached almost mythical proportions. He already has a substantial cultural influence on a city – and region – known as the unofficial capital of Latin America and probably will continue to do so. Restaurants have changed their menus to include Messi-themed dishes. Murals and signs of Messi have popped up everywhere. Argentine culture spreads through him.
“The magnitude of this announcement — no matter how much I prepared, imagined, dreamed — is staggering,” said Jorge Mas, the South Florida-born Cuban-American billionaire who is the CEO-owner of Inter Miami. “You would have to live in a cave not to know that Leo Messi is an Inter Miami player anywhere in the world.”
Look no further than the demand for tickets.
Granted, Inter Miami plays at a 19,000-seat capacity stadium about 30 miles north of downtown Miami and is a placeholder until a proposed larger venue next to Miami International Airport is found. expected to be completed in two years.
But prices for many tickets to Messi’s first Inter Miami game increased by more than $300 from about $40. While getting used to a new team, Messi didn’t start the game – part of a new month-long tournament between MLS and Liga MX called Leagues Cup – but it was a sell-out anyway. From the start of the game, long before he entered the field as a substitute in the 54th minute, fans chanted his name.
The average ticket price in the secondary market for Inter Miami’s remaining home games skyrocketed from $152 to $850, with road games seeing an even bigger jump, according to Ticket IQ.
While some fans have gotten their hands on a Messi Inter Miami shirt, the items are hard to find online. A note on the Inter Miami and MLS official stores, which are run by the sportswear retailer Fanatics, said so Adidas, the league’s official jersey supplier, would “deliver this product by mid-October”. Around that time, the MLS regular season ends. (Adidas did not respond to a request for comment.)
Since the launch of Messi’s new shirt on Monday, Inter Miami has become the best-selling team in all sports, according to Fanatics. The company said on Thursday it has sold more Inter Miami merchandise since Monday than in the previous seven and a half months of 2023.
“This is going to give us a level of global exposure that we could never have achieved without a player like Messi,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber. “Whether it’s in South America or Argentina or Europe, because he had legendary careers in Barcelona and France. The goal is to generate as much interest in Messi as possible.”
Before Messi’s announcement, Inter Miami’s Instagram account had one million followers. The count had exploded to nearly 11 million on Friday, surpassing Inter Milan, the legendary football club in Italy. all professional sports teams in the United States save for three NBA teams.
“The city has a bit of a buzz right now,” Inter Miami defender DeAndre Yedlin told nearly 40 reporters gathered for a Thursday morning workout, a crowd much larger than usual. “People are very enthusiastic, which is nice to see.”
Messi’s presentation event on Sunday – which was broadcast worldwide in English and Spanish on Apple TV, MLS’ freshman streaming partner – had nearly 500 media members accredited, according to Inter Miami. And nearly 200 were cleared for Messi’s first training session, with a news helicopter circling the sky since early that morning. Even though reporters were allowed access to only 15 minutes of the training session, which is common in sports, television and radio reporters from Argentina broadcast live from their spots across the field, and then later from the parking lot.
“That’s a gift Leo gave the sport,” said David Beckham, the former football star and owner of Inter Miami. “It’s about the legacy for him. He is at the stage of his career where he has done everything a footballer can do in the sport.”
Even off the pitch, Messi is one of the most famous people on the planet. During the World Cup in Qatar, it was common to see not only Argentinian fans wearing his jersey and singing the chants of the national team, but also people from Bangladesh or the Philippines. For example, a 9-meter-high cutout of Messi is located in the South Indian state of Kerala.
Building on its popularity in Asia, Argentina’s national football federation had already begun its plans to grow in the US market a year and a half ago. Leandro Petersen, the AFA’s chief commercial and marketing officer, said the federation has struck 30-year deals in South Florida to either build new facilities (North Bay village) or to renovate existing ones (Hialeah) to use as training centers for the national team ahead of the 2024 Copa América tournament and the 2026 World Cup.
But now that Messi is here, Petersen said the federation is benefiting from the boost and timelines are speeding up. In the old days, he said, it was more difficult to compete with the established American sports leagues, such as the NFL or NBA
“What’s happening now is that several companies that haven’t invested in soccer because it’s not the most popular sport in the United States are now starting to allocate a portion in their budgets to invest in soccer,” Petersen said in Spanish.
Emi Danieluk, the brand ambassador of a local chain of Argentine steakhouses called Baires Grill, who has regularly hosted Messi, his family and his Argentine teammates, said Messi’s arrival had already brought more visibility to Argentine culture, products and food. He sees more potential ripple effects from Messi’s presence.
“We have an example today of what Messi generates in Florida, but I can assure you that when he starts traveling for Inter Miami to other stadiums with more capacity, like Atlanta United and 80,000 people, the impact he will have in every state is really significant,” said Danieluk. “I don’t think people realize that now.”
Those in attendance at Friday’s game saw Messi’s substantial impact. After he and Sergio Busquets, a fellow newcomer and former teammate of Messi’s at Barcelona, came into play, they began to expose Cruz Azul’s defence. In stoppage time, Messi made a foul and worked his magic. He drove the crowd into a frenzy, celebrated with teammates, and rushed over to hug his family.
“We want to start like this, give the victory to these people and thank all the people here,” Messi said afterwards, later adding: “I hope we continue like this and they continue to accompany us all year.”